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Aunt and Uncle

October 15, 2010

I love doing research in the library. Answering reference questions is my favorite thing, if a little rare these days. But, I am not a genealogist. Still, I was curious about some people who were important to me when I was a child, and I found some of the answers I was looking for by using online resources available to me through MCPL.

My godmother and her husband were good friends of my parents. They were lovely people whom we called Uncle and Aunt. They had one son, but I don’t remember him very well. Aunt was a petite woman who had big and shining eyes. Uncle had a beautiful speaking voice. When he explained something to you, or was in any way “making a point”, his voice became quieter so that you listened carefully. He was a veteran of World War II, like my father. Dad was particularly unhappy when Uncle and Aunt moved to California in the 1960’s; Uncle was truly one of his closest friends.

I think I only saw them two times after that, in 1966 when my large and rambunctious family went to California in our Ford station wagon. I saw them again in the 1970’s when they visited Kansas City. They loved living in southern California. Unfortunately, Aunt had a stroke when she was barely middle-aged. I remember Uncle explaining that as they made the journey by car, they used the time for speech therapy drills so that she would make a full recovery.

After I went to college and moved away from Kansas City, I didn’t hear much about Aunt and Uncle. My dad told me when he’d been informed that Uncle had passed away. Recently, I decided to find out what happened to them.

I searched the Genealogy online resources and found the date of Uncle’s passing. I discovered that he is buried in a military cemetery in California, and sadly that his son predeceased him. I viewed a copy of Aunt and Uncle’s marriage license, filed in Jackson County, Missouri, in the early 1950’s. It contained Aunt’s married name, her age, and the name of her mother. Aunt must be in her late 80’s now. I wasn’t able to find any mention of her death.

It wasn’t much of a search compared to some of our MCPL customers’ long and exhaustive research. But now I know what happened to Uncle. I’m going to search again for Aunt, knowing I can call upon our Genealogy librarians if I need help.

Ancestry Library Edition provided the resources I needed for my search: The Social Security Death Index, the California Death Index, the U.S. Public Records Index, U.S. Veterans Gravesites, and Missouri Marriage Records. Ancestry Library Edition is available for in-library use only.